(3) Industrial Protection of Women. The chairman, Miss Ethel M. Smith, said in part:
"This committee was created by the National Suffrage Board to secure women workers to fill the places of men called for military service and it promised to 'protect the work of such women.' A letter was sent to five hundred Chambers of Commerce over Mrs. Catt's signature, asking for their cooperation in behalf of women workers against the danger of excessive overtime and underpay. The slogan of 'Equal Pay for Equal Work' was utilized and vigilance committees were planned for each State to note the conditions in industrial localities and report back to Washington. The questions of equal pay for equal work and equal opportunity for women were then taken up with the Government departments, which have been quite as unfair to women employees as have private firms. The scale of pay is notoriously less than for men, and women have been excluded from the civil service examinations for many positions which they are well equipped to fill. We therefore sent a letter to the Departments of War, Navy, State and Commerce where the discrimination had been proved, asking whether they would not modify their regulations to give women equal chances with men, and, now that men were needed for the army, give women the clerical positions in preference to men. We published these letters and received favorable replies from all but the State Department." Miss Smith told of the discovery that women in the Bureau of Engraving, under the Treasury Department, were working twelve hours a day seven days in the week; of the protest of her committee sent through Mrs. Catt to Secretary McAdoo and of his order restoring the eight-hour day and removing all cause of complaint."
(4) Americanization. The chairman, Mrs. Frederick P. Bagley, said that her first act was to secure three wise and experienced suffragists to form with her a central committee, Mrs. Shuler, corresponding secretary of the National Suffrage Association; Mrs. Robert S. Huse of New Jersey, and Mrs. Winona Osborn Pinkham, executive secretary of the Boston Equal Suffrage Association. A plan for Americanization work was printed in the Woman Citizen, June 30, 1917, and was sent to each State president with a letter asking for the appointment of a State chairman. Mrs. Bagley's thorough résumé of the work of her committee filled eleven pages of the printed convention report and among the various branches described were recruiting in the foreign tenement quarters for attendance at the public schools; securing cooperation with foreign leaders and with existing agencies for Americanization work; enlisting the cooperation of employers in providing school facilities for employees; teaching English in the homes where the women had not been able to attend school and aiding in the carrying on of the day school for immigrant women now established in the North End of Boston. She told of two new departments, Americanization for rural districts and citizenship classes for women voters. She urged, not only the necessity of schools for adult foreigners but the desirability of good ones that would hold their attention and she made a special plea for the immigrant women. She also called attention to the imperative need for teaching patriotism.
The plan of work recommended by the Executive Council and adopted by this convention provided that the association during 1918 should continue the four departments and add the Woman's Hospital Unit in France and Child Welfare; that these six departments be placed under the direction of a committee, the chairman of which should be a member of the national suffrage board; that each State suffrage auxiliary be asked to establish a War Service Committee, composed of chairmen of the above sections, with an additional one on Liberty Bonds. This Committee of Eight was to direct the war work for each State in cooperation with the State division of the Woman's Committee, Council of National Defense. The Land Army Section was added in the spring of 1918 and took the place of the Food Production section. The name of the Thrift section was changed to that of Food Conservation; Miss Hilda Loines became its chairman and its work was combined as closely as possible with the similar section in the Woman's National Defense Committee directed by Mrs. McCormick.
The National Suffrage Association held no convention in 1918 but it met in March, 1919, at St. Louis for its 50th Anniversary. The Armistice had been declared and the final reports of the association's war activities were rendered. In that of the War Service Department the chairman, Mrs. McCormick, stated that the reason the reports did not cover all six of its sections but only Land Army, Americanization and Oversea Hospitals was that the other sections, after the convention of 1917, were merged with the similar sections of the Woman's Committee, Council of National Defense. Detailed statements regarding Food Conservation and Industrial Protection for women in which the suffrage committees took so large a part, may be found in the reports of the Government Agriculture and Labor Departments. The Child Welfare Department was combined with that of the Woman's National Defense Committee and both were put under the guidance of Miss Julia Lathrop, chief of the Children's Bureau of the United States Department of Labor. Miss Lathrop made an address to the convention in St. Louis on this subject which was published in full in its Handbook for 1919.
In the section Industrial Protection of Women Mrs. Gifford Pinchot had followed Miss Ethel M. Smith as chairman and in a brief report told how nominal the function of her committee had recently become, owing to the fact that all agencies working in this field had been consolidated under the direction of the U. S. Department of Labor. Before this amalgamation three interesting lines of effort had been carried forward by this committee: An attempt was made to secure a representation of women on the War Labor Board, which did not succeed; action was taken against the decision of this board in dismissing women street car conductors in Cleveland, O., and the committee's position was upheld; an unsuccessful effort was made through Mr. Gompers to have women appointed on the committee of labor delegates who went abroad to confer with the labor representatives of other countries during the Peace Conference.
Land Army. Miss Hilda Loines, chairman, said in part:
"The training of women for agricultural work as a war necessity was early foreseen by the National Suffrage Association and was made a part of its program of war service. Early in the spring of 1917 a number of organizations undertook to register and place women who could and would do agricultural labor. Bureaus were opened for their registry and field workers were sent out to secure promises of employment from the farmers. This was difficult at first but as the season wore on and there were no men to cultivate the crops and pick the fruit the farmers in desperation turned to the women. During the spring and summer of 1918 the Woman's Land Army was organized in thirty States, and about 15,000 women were placed on the land, 10,000 in units and 5,000 in emergency groups. The majority of these women had had no previous experience and most of them could receive little training but they did practically every kind of farm labor, ploughing, planting, cultivating and harvesting. They cut, stacked and loaded hay, corn and rye and filled the silos; worked on big western farms and orchards, dairy farms, truck farms, private estates and home gardens; did poultry work, beekeeping and teaming; learned to handle tractors, harvesters and other farm machinery. Their efficiency is best proved by the change of attitude from skepticism to enthusiastic appreciation on the part of the farmers for whom they worked."